As I was getting ready to blog this year’s road trip with my best friend Nicole, I realized I never blogged last year’s road trip, the one that started it all! If you haven’t seen her face around here yet, you’ll learn to recognize Nicole pretty quickly between these two blog posts. We’ve been best friends for years, and we’ve decided to take this friendship on the road. Together we have several traditions: trading The Book of Everything that chronicles our adventures since we were 16, throwing a piece of paper with a Spanish tongue twister on it at each other since we were 15, watching Marvel and Disney movies, going to a new amusement park every year, and now an annual road trip to take us somewhere new. This is our first road trip together, and it is happily the first of many.

This is The Nicole & Sydney Road Trip Chronicles: North Carolina & Virginia.

Also check out The Nicole & Sydney Road Trip Chronicles: New England & Canada!

Day 1: We left Arlington early in the morning and headed straight for Charlotte, North Carolina. And by straight, I mean entirely on curvy back roads where we stopped numerous times at antique shops and a local produce shop, where the owner was an alumni from JMU and talked to us about the greatest university on Earth. We stayed in a hotel just north of Charlotte on Lake Norman and drove around to docks and parks.

Day 2: We drove right into Charlotte, where we walked around one of their bigger parks and drove through the art districts to get our fill of murals and modern art. A storm was making its way east so we quickly drove out of the city and explored the North Carolina Zoo. Nicole and I have been to several zoos and aquariums together, and this one was absolutely incredible. It was towards the end of the day so there were few people around, and the train to the far end of the park was empty and fun to ride. Afterwards, we met Nicole’s friend for dinner in Raleigh and stayed the night with him and his family.

Day 3: We drove east until we hit the coast, then turned north with Virginia Beach as our destination. The storm was still following us, leaving the boardwalk in beautiful fog. After a lunch of fresh seafood, we went to the Adventure Park at the Virginia Aquarium and were schooled by middle schoolers on a field trip. As it got dark, they turned on the fairy lights and we climbed in the stars.

Day 4: After crashing on a friend’s couch, we left early in the morning to explore a campground near the beach and drive around under the most beautiful canopy of trees I’ve ever seen. We were killing time until a tattoo parlor opened up, where we got matching tattoos of the Neverland stars. It was the first ink for both of us and it will remain special to us forever.

We drove home that night, happy and exhausted, our first of many road trips complete. If you’d like to see the rest of our adventures, be sure to follow along, because they’ll be happening for the rest of our lives!

Check out our New England and Canada road trip, coming this week!